Pandora's Box
by karierte
Summary: Try and catch me if you can; I'll conquer the world with a kiss from my gun. Mello drabbles.
1. passenger seat

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oo1:** passenger seat**

_karierte_

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'_One of us gets to drive; one of us gets to think' – J_immy Eat World, Always Be

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I'm doing this for me.

Matt thinks I'm revenging L or some shit like that, that I must've had too much vodka to give up my tenacious hold on the steering wheel, but really…I'm just feeling introspective. I have alcohol instead of blood tonight and it's burning through my veins, making me feel.

We don't need to talk; he and I.

He thinks he's got me all figured out now, now that I called and he came. I let him. He'll die for me, if I let him. Fool.

I can see the end of his cigarette smile, all soft amber light and pale grey ash dripping into his lap, with the backdrop of the Los Angeles cityscape. I shift in my seat, and the leather squeaks disinterestingly. No words.

The sky is a starless ocean, with lamppost beacons beckoning us home, and just on the horizon I can discern the finish line, the very end of everything.

I want to be first. And I'll do it for me, for the satisfaction of standing above the world and knowing I'm the superlative ('of the highest kind, quality, or order; surpassing all else or others; supreme') over all else, because no one else deserves it more.

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**A/N**

So, this is my Mello practice! This drabble is dedicated to **Haku'sBest13**, and I hope she'll enjoy it--thank you very much for all of your constructive reviews for my stories. I have several more of these drabbles waiting to come out, and this will be updated fairly regularly, each drabble with a different theme and dedication. Feedback is appreciated~


	2. first the worst

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oo2**: first the worst**

_karierte_

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_'You're gold, live it up in your dreams' – A_ntoine Claraman, Gold

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When Mello closes his eyes, he is standing on a podium. He is golden, just like in the bathroom mirror, grainy light filtering through a dirty sash window so he can see his glow and the dust particles, breath spearmint fresh.

Near lingers as the silvery wraith of second place; twirling a lock of hair between his fingers, skin one un-ending sheet of blank white paper. He's crouching, surrounded by small cardboard boxes and toys (three Transformer robots and one dinosaur), something that Mello remembers from his brief excursion into the SPK headquarters. It was the last time he saw him: squatting on that tiled floor, a pajama'd porcelain doll of perfection--and Mello was so very happy that Near didn't turn around and see the ugly thing he has become.

Matt is slouching and bronzed. He's happy to be here, Mello supposes, happy enough to live in their shadows. Tight jeans and a striped shirt, always the same, the sight of which Mello has become curiously dependent. His goggles and his Nintendo never disappoint Mello with their message: nothing will change. Matt, who he could never _quite_ figure out, who never _wanted_ as Mello did for something more, now leans against the dividing wall, words undescribable.

Together they stand unequal, and look down upon their small worlds with a smile.

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**A/N**

This one is for **Nozomi-sama**, whose writing is unbearably beautiful and whose reviews make me smile. She's played a major part in the plot of 'Inked In Blood', and I've admired her since wayyy back in the Naruto fandom. As always, I love feedback~

REVISED: 11th September, 2009


	3. hellfire

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oo3**: ****hellfire**

_karierte_

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_'This fire in my skin, this burning desire, is turning me to sin.' – T_he Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hellfire

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I stand among an ocean of clothing: shirts, boxer shorts and socks, all puddled reverently at my feet, some of them mine, most of them Matt's. I'm watching him breathe: in, out, rise, fall; unaware. I want to strangle that white chocolate throat with a crucifix: press harsh, wet kisses down his windpipe; bruise that mouth as red as a whore's, ruin every inch of him until he's broken and he belongs to me. I'm sick: blushing, sweating, _shameless_ Matt writhing underneath me; lips open, legs open, twisting knives into my immortal soul.

I speak: _Father forgive_, imagining lust-hazed green eyes, dilated dark, dark pupils and tears of painful pleasure, begging clutching needy hands scraping at my back. I'm watching him breathe: harsher, shallower, faster breathing in my mind, with the addition of a few muffled mewling moans. I want to torture him: the blurred line between punishment and sex, grip that hip until its black and blue and purple, tongues impossibly twined together, hot slick skin.

God has forsaken me: I'm not praying hard enough.

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**A/N**

I liked this one, actually. Well, it's for **Blank Canvas23**, and our French conversations together :3 -- thank you! These drabbles are short and plotless, and they don't have any relevance to each other, but I enjoy writing them and so I hope, despite their obvious lack of quality, that you enjoy them too.

Feedback is loved ^^


	4. conjunction

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oo4**: ****conjunction**

_karierte_

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Your mother would hold your hand as if it were a kite string, ribbons trailing, whenever you went out. It's always crisp autumn, when you walked with her, cold enough to blow dragon breath into the numb air, to hear leaves crunching beneath small feet. She'd smile.

At night, she'd sing to you; _hush little baby_, forehead to forehead, even though you were six. You'd whisper the Lord's Prayer into your pillow; she'd turn the lights off. Amen.

She had gaps between her teeth, but it hadn't mattered to you then in those pavement-skipping days, where nothing mattered but the moment. When you—the young you; the old you—could still say, _mummy_, then let your fingers link together without shame. You took each day as it came, naïve. Always running forwards, gliding on the whistling wind with wide eyes.

Sometimes, she'd cry, tears seeping from her palms, trembling, the most horrible sounds coming out. You'd watch.

You wanted to ask: _why_, but you were afraid she might tell you the truth.

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**A/N**

Notice anything? Hmm, hmm? I'll tell you anyways, XD. This drabble does not have the word 'and' in it--I'm so proud. Also, I experimented with the unknown realm of second person, so I'm not quite sure how I feel about it yet. The drabble is for **smearedliner**: I hope you liked it. And, **Nozomi-sama**, was the varied sentence length coming through...?

Feedback is still loved~ :3


	5. grapefruit

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oo5: **grapefruit**

_karierte_

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When Matt was twelve, his favourite film was The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Mello would cringe through the gartered, corseted, transsexual Transylvanian transvestitery on an uncomfortably regular basis and Matt would lean his little red head on the arm rest and supply nose-pinched 'Janet's at the correct intervals. He'd often glance sidelong at him, Mello, watching the reflected television in the goggle lenses, wondering what kind of shit was going on behind them.

He still has no idea about Matt's shit, when Matt is nineteen with a skinny white neck that looks like it'll snap under his sombre face. It's strange, now, because he's longer and lankier and altogether _more_ than Mello could have ever remembered. Being with him is like being a child again; all shiny new. The rain dribbles down as they sit together, uncomfortable nostalgia gathering at their socks and it's easy to forget the Uzi tucked neatly in the belt loop of his leather trousers, smiling.

These friendly, bittersweet nothings they're sharing aren't going to last, after all. Mello keeps his enemies closest.

Mello's going to kill him, Matt, someday, somehow. And this scene will be dead with him.

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**A/N**

A quick, crap drabble. Oh dear. Dedicated to the wondrous **Diabolus Kara**, and I hope it didn't disappoint ^^'


	6. god save the dream, part 1

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oo6:** god save the dream**

_karierte_

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_'Well, I said, that's it, I'm not going home with no-one' – W_e Are Scientists, This Scene Is Dead

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"One of the kids in the Beyblade adverts," He replied with no hesitation, smiling as he stabbed the straw into his carton of apple juice, "and to live in a giant hamster ball."

"Christ, seriously? Such high aspirations…" I quipped drolly, kicking him neatly under the table.

Matt raised an eyebrow. "But I guess, when you were five, you said to your mother that you wanted to be a blasphemous, Catholic, gun-toting, leather freak."

"She came around when I told her it was more about the dangerous weaponry." I tossed the sorry foil remains of his Kit Kat onto the floor.

"…yet you still ended up becoming an accountant." He bit into my peach with a smug look, juice trickling from the corner of his mouth.

"Speak for yourself, loser. _You're_ an accountant. _I'm _a Financial Manager."

He sniffed theatrically, "That's not what you told me last night."

"We weren't discussing childhood ambitions and job titles last night. We were discussing crappy David Attenborough documentaries last night."

"And then we had sex on the floor."

"And then we had sex on the sofa." I added.

His eyebrows knitted together in concentration. "It was the floor first, right?"

"Yeah; with _Blue Planet_ in the background."

"Those whales are quite something." Matt murmured.

"I have the _Life of Mamma__ls_ boxset." I offered with a smirk, wiping the sticky mess on his chin with my thumb.

He grinned.

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**A/N**

I wanted to do something a little different than what I've done so far, and decided: DIALOGUE. I'm very out of practice. And of course, a different setting--an AU that I'd like to continue with at some point. For **Edward slept with Poison Akii**...you're a sweetheart.


	7. cracks

oo7: **crack**

_karierte_

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'I'm not here to say I'm sorry' – S_hayne Ward, That's My Goal

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And you tasted like a thousand broken things, crushed and crumpled in your wake. You watched pain, and you dealt it like a winning hand, smiling all the while as they screamed and died and grasped for mercy in the face – in _your_ face – of such mindless cruelty. Sad.

And you tasted like chocolate, like bitterness and dirt and cigarette butts and shit, because you hated that sourness abandoned on your tongue; which reminded you that you were only just fifteen (_many happy returns_) and quite clearly mucked up in the head. A twisted joker's mouth painted on your face and it hurt so bad to keep that angelic smile and hide those fractured thousand in between. Difficult.

But you hoped like an apostle, with wide deer-like eyes and a Jesus-less crucifix juxtaposed between your cold fingers and sweaty palms.

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**A/N**

This is er, the work of less than five minutes. This is for anyone's who's reading, and who cares enough to drop a review.

I'm worried my writing's becoming all the same...what are your thoughts on that?


	8. counting down the hours

oo8**: counting down the hours**

_karierte_

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"_And the world will be better for this; that one man, scorned and covered with scars, still strove with his last ounce of courage__ t__o reach the unreachable star." –_ _M_an of La Mancha, The Impossible Dream

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Mello is not entirely happy about being Jesus today.

He feels quite put-upon, really, the fate of the world is resting on his skinny shoulders as per usual and he has to go and be a martyr about it. The only other option is _not _being a martyr, of course, but he's going to die anyway and might as well do the dying now to get it over with. Fight fire with fire and all that.

The tiny part of him that he keeps in his pocket – the reason why he'll never be L – wonders why it has to be him. _My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?_ It will be a dreary death, he knows already. It will be stupid but necessary and Mello will not let his death be wasted as so many deaths have been wasted in the face of Kira and his insufferable power complex. He has been broken and blown back together and it will _not be for nothing_.

He is an incendiary; capable of causing fire.

It is finished.

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**A/N**

It's been a while. Anyone want to play spot the Bible quotation?


	9. phoenix

oo9:** phoenix**

_karierte_

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"_I won't be denied by you, the animal inside of you." – N_eon Trees, Animal

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He loves him so bright; it's _burning_.

Those metaphorical hell-flames all-consuming like the first three colours of a rainbow, reaching up into the sky like a red climbing rose with nothing to hold onto. Mello finds himself in their kisses and loses them in Matt, in the rush of their flushing hot-cold desire. He can't breathe for it. Burnt out like the cigarette ash in the carpet.

It's that fierce fire feeling—that Matt is giving everything to him, giving, giving, gone until there's nothing left to be taken.

Mello eats it. He takes it on his tongue and relishes the taste as sweet as if it were chocolate.

It's fast as flying, skin on skin. He swears and sweats and everything blurs together in this shitty apartment, with Matt and sky and stars and words only one letter apart. The polysyndeton is killing him as swiftly as he's killing himself. _Andandand _he _is_, for this. Falling for this.

Matt props himself up on his elbows and swallows him whole: his mouth soft and bruised as a bad apple and their bitter, brittle love is graceless as inferno. Mello tears at Matt's jeans, eyes animal and aflame. Every touch is science; chemistry combusting, physics converging together and refracting apart like prisms and broken visible light and the sheer _biology _of them. It's them.

It's them that have made this stupid soupçon of a striped, leather mess on the floor tonight.

But Mello just enjoys it while he can.

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**A/N**

That song, I absolutely love. I decided to put a more...cheerful(?) drabble in to lighten the mood a little. I liked the poetry of this one and I'd like to know what you thought. After PM-ing everyone on the alerts list of 'Inked In Blood' - I'm finding that my readers are wonderful and I'm very glad to have you, all of you. This is for **laughing senseless**, who is very mysterious and an absolute pleasure.


	10. take something like a star

o1o:** take something like a star**

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"_I never ever wanna sleep again; I wanna live until I die." – T_he Bravery, Song For Jacob

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"You know why the stars shine, Matt?" I ask, splayed out like a snow angel and reaching for the lost light years between me and the mown grass.

He turned his head to look at me, skin pale in the half-moon, "They're on fire."

They don't look it.

The night is swirling dark and the stars look like they've been thrown there, pearls shaken in someone's hand like dice. I can't find Polaris, can't see the connect-the-dot diagrams neat in the encyclopaedia. But with my fingers outstretched into infinity; it seems as if I'm touching them, bright and burning as bones.

But the cosmos is many handspans away.

"You're a starboy." Matt murmurs, almost inaudibly and for a second, I think there is a noose around his neck. His goggles have been pushed down against his throat. He twists back to the endlessness and swallows.

He's wrong. The North Star that I'd been searching for all this time; never changing its place in the sky, is right next to me on the ground – _has been right next to me _– in black cotton pyjamas. With hair the colour of a blood orange and eyes old as the planets reflected in them, empty as space. Empty to the brim.

"Mello?"

"Yeah."

We lie there in silence as thick as a sunset.

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**A/N**

Ah, this one is for **Yosh-cosplay**. This is to say a big, _big _thank you for how you're (nearly always) there for me (that sounded full of cheese, but it's true) and for your ever-lovely e-hugs. Let's kill the night and go down in style, :'D.

And I love feedback and reviews, so, don't be afraid to drop one my way :)


	11. firearms at face value

o11:** firearms at face value**

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"_God, who'd wanna be…God, who'd wanna be such an asshole?" – M_odest Mouse, Bukowski

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There are very few problems, Mello considers, that can't be solved by having fifteen grenades in your pocket.

He takes the grenades out. He takes the pins out. He takes himself out, watches the building blow, watches himself watching.

And this is him, now. That's the sad thing.

He wants to be sick, sometimes. The newer subordinates _are_; twisted insides spilling out onto the concrete while Mello holds it in, just swallows down the bile and wonders if his intestines are rotting with it.

Wonders if his brain is beginning to enjoy this now.

And what if it is, now? That's the sad thing.

He can't even remember who he was before, but for the blue. Endless blue skies and endless blue eyes, that's all.

Tonight, he'll be punching the shit out of someone until they piss blood over their trousers and cough up some cocaine. All coarse and filthy and black leather gloves, getting his hands metaphorically dirty in ways Near never would have done – and Near's a long way from here. He's nowhere near at all.

This city's dissolving him. In a way, he'd thought he could stay above it, a lotus rising up from the mud. Mello had let go of that illusion rather quickly when he crushed someone's radius under a steel-capped boot, saw their ulna poke out by their wrist, heard screams distorted and distant through the haze of alcohol, not knowing whose they were. Liked it, maybe.

Liked the power of it, maybe, as he pressed down harder, putting a fist in his mouth to keep from vomiting. That's when it started.

As he discovered there was direct proportion between pressure and pain.

And all he's learnt from Los Angeles is that there are very few problems that can't be solved by having fifteen grenades in your pocket.

But, they're the most important ones.

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**A/N**

I dropped a bowl today and spilt water and rice everywhere and my family's annoyed at me. This a belated birthday present for **i had a dream last night **(with full stops, but ffdotnet is refusing to believe this can happen) whose present was also kinda chapter 3 from Inked In Blood. Alliteration tap isn't going anywhere, unfortunately, and it's been joined with repetition and onomatopoeia, D:. These drabbles are getting longer.

Feedback adored~


	12. god save the dream, part 2

o12: **god save the dream, part 2**

_karierte_

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"_Don't want a kiss, don't want a touch; just want my cigarette hug." – L_ady Gaga, Alejandro

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"I would have thought that a big, badass Financial Manager such as yourself would be far too manly for post-coital cuddling."

"Oh, shut up, lowly underling." I muttered, nipping at his neck. Our limbs were entangled as badly as the cables connected to the TV, sticky with sweat and sex.

He smirked up into a nicotine kiss. "Not a chance...I mean, for once we're actually in a bed."

"I'll make you remember why you like carpet burn, if you want," I said dryly, running my fingertips down his spine until he shivered.

"Did you forget to put on your chastity belt this morning or something?"

"I may have mislaid the matching handbag, too."

Matt licked a stripe down my cheek. "Pft. You're on." There was a fever of kisses, burning as he rubbed my hip with a calloused, cigarette-stained thumb.

"Bitch, _please_," I poked him in between the ribs. "Once you've _brushed your teeth_."

The redhead huffed, wrinkling his nose until I shoved him, naked and necessary, onto the floor. "Fine. _Then_, you're _on_."

"I'm so frightened," I drawled. "My one weakness: terrible dirty talk involving USB ports."

There was a pause as he yelled "You know you love it!" from the bathroom.

And I kind of did.

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**A/N**

Guess what?

They're back! And so am I, e_e. This has been half-written for a while (dialogue is hard for me, ;_;) but you'll forgive me, right? The accountancy!AU has been resurrected and everything is good despite my sporadic updates. Also, _50+ _reviews, woah :'D-thank you, dears.


	13. narrator

o13: **narrator**

_karierte_**  
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"_The sunset still looks fake to me; the hero looks like he can't breathe." – M_ayday Parade, Black Cat

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If Near – the bastard – was telling this story, he wouldn't get a mention. Not properly. Bastard.

"And then he died in the driver's seat of a lorry." Oops. Lol jokes, it wasn't supposed to happen like that, now, was it?

Near doesn't know that he's not the main character, though. Near doesn't know that this is a story about a blond orphan boy with an IQ of 199 (not quite 200, never quite 200) who tore out his heart and left his soul in a suitcase in Italy. He doesn't know that this is about how Mello has made himself into a different shape.

About how Mello couldn't quite fit back into the space he left behind.

Sonuvabitch.

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**A/N**

I just wanted to write something. This came out, however unadvisable it was. Feedback loved~**  
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